JCT: Arianna Huffington writes another great "B" paper.
Can't give her an "A" since she has no solution to offer at
the end of her piece. But she always informs with panache.

>Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 15:07:35 -0500
>From: arianna@... (Arianna Huffington)
>Subject: Crime And (Very Little) Punishment

AH: Send the bastards to jail! At least, so goes the refrain
from America's newest anti-corporate activists -- the
Senate, the House, and the President. Clearly, corporate
crime is finally starting to register on pollsters'
seismographs because suddenly all of official Washington is
high on corporate punishment -- drunk on the idea of tossing
CEO scofflaws in the slammer. The Big House is all the rage,
with politicians on both sides of the aisle dancin' to the
jailhouse rock.

JCT: I wonder how many white-collar criminals there were at
Bordeaux in Montreal when Ray Turmel passed through a couple
of weeks ago? Any of the Prime Minister's friends? Yet?

AH: A day after President Bush took Wall Street to the
woodshed and proposed doubling the maximum prison term for
mail fraud and wire fraud, the Senate did him one better,
voting 97-0 to adopt stiff new criminal penalties for
securities fraud, document shredding and the filing of false
financial reports.

JCT: Double the penalties for the few who get caught. Bush
league legislation.

AH: "Somebody needs to go to jail," Senate Majority Leader
Tom Daschle intoned ominously. "We're going to shackle them
and take them to jail," growled House Majority Whip Tom
DeLay, sounding like he couldn't wait to slap on the
handcuffs himself. The new consensus along that other Axis
of Evil, the one connecting Washington and Wall Street, is
that very publicly hauling a few corporate crooks off to
jail would be a very good thing for the market, for the
economy -- and for our political leaders' reelection
prospects. Count me in with the law-and-order crowd. The
question is, how many of corporate America's new breed of
robber barons will ever actually see the inside of a jail
cell? If the past is indeed prologue, the answer is very,
very few.

JCT: But now they'll be staying longer.

AH: In the last ten years, the Securities and Exchange
Commission -- which, despite being the government's top
corporate watchdog, doesn't have the authority to toss even
the worst Wall Street cheaters in jail -- turned 609 of its
most offensive offenders over to the Justice Department for
potential criminal prosecution. Of those, only 187 ended up
facing criminal charges. And of those, only 87 went to jail.
Eighty-seven. In 10 years. And most white-collar criminals
land in one of those ritzy country club prisons, where
inmates play tennis and make collect calls to their brokers
all day.

JCT: But now they'll be better tennis players.

AH: So despite the PR value of pumping up maximum sentences
for corporate crimes, it's not going to make much of a dent
in boardroom thievery since so few of the perpetrators will
ever face criminal prosecution. For a corrupt corporate
chieftain crunching the numbers, the odds will still justify
the crime. Doubling the penalties for those convicted of
crimes that are so rarely prosecuted is not serious reform.

JCT: Ah, chere madame, but what is serious reform? Ask a
question. Hoping there's an answer.

AH: And just why are most prosecutors so reluctant to take
on these kinds of cases, passing up more than half of the
ones the SEC sends their way? Well, for one thing, proving
fraudulent intent is tricky business -- and in criminal
cases, it has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

JCT: Sure, the guys who bought government have the deck
stacked in their favor if they're caught. Wouldn't you pay
government to do the same for you if you were one of the
guys who had paid to buy the governors?

AH: For another, with rare exceptions, most prosecutors just
don't have either the passion for making corporate criminals
pay or the mindset that these kinds of crimes are worth the
hassle of pursuing them. Too busy busting prostitutes in New
Orleans, perhaps? Even New York Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer, one of the few who has shown a willingness to take
on Wall Street's elite, allowed Merrill Lynch to walk away
with a fine but without having to admit guilt for brazenly
misleading investors -- even though Spitzer had the bankers
dead to rights.

JCT: Did I say bought? Is that the whole purpose of buying
politicians so that not only can you steal from the
citizenry with virtual impunity but when you get caught,
you've got your people in the Crown's office to recommend
staying the charges or that they don't "see enough evidence
for a good enough probability of conviction." A fine without
having to admit guilt that those who lost their savings
could use as the basis for law suits. "No court said I did
wrong," has to help defend against any civil suit. But
wouldn't you expect the guys who bought the governors to
have this kind of legislation to protect them put in?

I wonder if it's as bad in Canada. Start with the latest
anti-terrorism legislation which lets people come in from
International Organizations and have immunity from Canada's
Criminal Code. A foreign hit man gets a job with the World
Bank, comes to a conference in Canada, assaults me, steals
from me, hits me with his car, and they walk. Why they put
that in is anyone's guess but do you think people vote for
chains if they're called chains? As we watch the US sink
into despotism and a few valiant Internauts try to protest,
we have to ask ourselves how quickly Canada could sink to a
police state too. Answer. Pierre Trudeau already showed
Canada could be converted into a police state almost
overnight with the right emergency. In the States, it took
calling off the Air Force to permit the Twin-Towers to be
bombed, in Canada, a few mail-box bombs and a couple of
kidnappings was all it took for me to find the army in the
streets.

AH: Plus, prosecutors like to win. When they go after a
corporate player, they know they'll be locking horns with
the best legal talent that billions can buy -- not running
roughshod over some overworked public defender. It's a high-
stakes game that many aren't willing to play.

JCT: Like prosecutors prosecuting is some kind of game they
can beg off if the odds don't look good? Prosecuting is a
public duty and I'd like to hear one not agree.

AH: Compare this tip-toeing on eggshells with the ardor with
which our criminal justice system pursues even the lowest-
level drug offenders. In 2000 alone, 646,042 people were
arrested in America for simple possession of marijuana. And
while the Drug Enforcement Administration has a budget of
$1.8 billion, even with the extra $100 million Bush wants to
toss its way, the SEC will have to make do with $513
million.

JCT: Jean Chretien has busted his own 20,000 harmless tokers
up here this year. The difference is that he was on the
Pierre Trudeau team that promised us the LeDain commission
recommendations in 1970s but when they recommended
legalisation, Pierre and Jean judased out the whole
electorate. Since then, every party in power has continued
busting harmless tokers. With 80% of the population in favor
of legalization in Canada today, only 150 Liberals have been
necessary to stymie the national will. Who are these
shameless people to deny the majority will?

And the Opposition party everyone is going to have vote for
"to get the Liberals out" are the Alliance party whose
record in Parliament already includes reneging on the
promise to support medpot legalisation when leader Stockwell
Day did his famous about-face turn. Or was that just a turn
of two faces? See comment on Alliance MP in Amsterdam
checking out hash houses later.

Regardless, no matter who gets in, the next set of 150 will
judas the liberation as they have been bought to do. No one
gets elected with money support. All politicians in Canada's
Parliament are in debt to big money. Sad but that's the way
the game is played. It's not an arena of intellectual
achievement - imagine Jean Chretien lawying in debate with
me - it's an arena of prostitutes, selling out to the
highest bidder.
I can only count the number of families that have been
destroyed due to Jean Chretien and his 150 Liberals. I can
count those destroyed before due to "Lying Brian" Mulroney
and his 150 Tories, before due to Pierre Trudeau and his 150
Liberals, before due to Joe Clark and his 150 Tories, etc.

And when you think that all the others in the House are
probably just as bad, given the Alliance example, that's
only 300 people thwarting the will of the nation.

But if government is nothing more than muscle for the money-
lenders creating laws and courts to collect their vigorish
through legislated Interest Acts, if government is nothing
more than the boss with the whip keeping the slaves in line
for the master, then Jean Chretien's interdicting the public
will to continue to destroy families will be a fun
indictment posterity will be able to consider when they
consider the record of Lawying Jean Chretien.

Imagine, two decades worth of Prime Ministers whose failures
to live up to their promises, whose lies in service of some
other entity than their public charges, 20 years worth of
guys everybody laughs at as liars.

I say politics is part of the control system to make the
slaves want to puke and to keep the slaves puking at every
thought of the greed, theft, problems, government causes
"for the public benefit." Only if a debt slavery system
really exists does it make any sense.

Yet, there are those who prefer to believe it's all
accidental. The government just hasn't yet seen enough
evidence that medpot is good for everyone. Let's all keep
trying to find more evidence to convince them in their
"good-hearted" search for the truth. Just a little bit more
convincing if they're not evil, if they're really good
people.

But they are prostitutes, bought by money. Not evil, not
good. Just bought. Just looking out for number one which is
the best strategy when the name of the game is "mort-gage"
"death-gamble." In the musical chairs deathgamble, optimal
strategy is "look out for number one." So too in business
under "mortgage" rules.

AH: The sentencing side of the criminal justice ledger
exhibits the same inequity: the average sentence for even
the biggest white-collar crooks is less than 36 months;
nonviolent, first time federal drug offenders are sent away
for over 64 months. So much for letting the punishment fit
the crime.

JCT: Average first time 5 years! 650,000 families destroyed
last year. I will always hold a fond thank you in my heart
for Arianna having organized the counter-convention in
Philadelphia during the Republican convention in Millennium
2000. I was still then playing poker at the Taj Mahal in
Atlantic City, only 60 miles away, so I attended two days,
one on the day when it was the pure "prove the drug war is
stupid" show, with Jesse Jackson, Governor Gary Johnson, and
a whole choir of children whose parents are all in jail for
lengthy sentences. (I may have reported on this earlier.)
They all took a few seconds to introduce themselves, little
children saying "My name is Amanda and my mommy will be
Ossissing for the next 23 years." A whole line-up. Probably
the most moving demonstration of the unnoticed victims of
the drug war.

So I can tell you I think Arianna's a really great lady and
has done lots of great stuff for someone who doesn't know
about LETS anti-poverty community currencies yet.

AH: The bitter truth is that, unlike the majority of
nonviolent drug cases, corporate malfeasance is not a
victimless crime. Not with tens of thousands of laid-off
workers, $630 billion lost from corporate pension plans, and
more than $4 trillion in shareholder assets wiped out in the
scandal-fueled stock market swoon.

JCT: Victims and families ruined by the numbers and they
walk. Enough to keep puking out the slaves though.

AH: So when it comes to rooting out corrupt corporate
kingpins, will the president's new "financial crimes SWAT
team" have the stomach for the fight? Can we expect to see
undercover "narc-accountants" infiltrating what's left of
the Big Five accounting firms? Middle of the night no-knock
raids on companies that restate their earnings by billions
of dollars? Confiscation of an executive's entire assets
simply on the suspicion of fraud? Will corporate cops get to
emulate their drug fighting counterparts and be allowed to
keep a percentage of the money they confiscate? I bet that
would help change the reluctance to target corporate
corruption.

JCT: Amazing. A pretty good non-LETS solution. Why should it
only be the family whose son is busted smoking marijuana who
lose their homes, why not white collar criminals too? Why
are white-collar criminals so often allowed to keep so much
of their loot? She pointed out earlier they can make it too
expensive to get. Too many lawyers defending the loot for
the public to get it back. But a law that lets the police
keep the loot will give them the same incentive to frame and
harass and destroy white-collar criminals who cause victims
with the marijuana criminals who do not. Just keeping the
slaves nauseous whenever they think of government. Makes
sure they're nauseous if anyone ever suggests changing it.
It works too.

AH: Here's the bottom line: our political leaders' tough
talk notwithstanding, are we really serious about declaring
war on corporate crime? Or are we merely going to toss
Martha Stewart in jail and move on?

JCT: I think Martha's already packing. Though Mrs.
Huffington always puts the boots to the malefactors, I like
to point out how all this crime and corruption cannot occur
in a LETS accounting system.
The present banking system makes it possible for accounts to
hold credits that no one knows where they came from.
Stealing is thus possible.

In every LETS transaction, there are always two accounts
affected. The creator and the acceptor. There's no way
anyone in a LETS can steal, there's nowhere to put it!

Sure, if a system is using paper notes as well as computer
credits, someone could steal someone else's IOUs rather than
simply sign his own but it seems not to have ever occurred
for the simple reason that being able to get the product by
signing and working instead of stealing is the decision
almost every time.

In all the almost 20 years of LETS computer currency time-
trading, there has not been one documented theft of the
currency. "Stick-em up. Credit my account" can only work for
so long! With nowhere to put stolen funds, LETS cannot have
these big financial holes that the present computer banking
system provides for thieves to make their loot disappear.

In all my arguments with LETSers about the superiority of
one world-wide UNILETS timecurrency account rather than a
whole bunch of local, municipal, provincial, national ones,
I have never pointed out that UNILETS does solve one problem
that some LETS do complain about.
Many LETS do complain about people who might spend their
IOUs then skip town thereby causing the system members to
lose. With a UNILETS, where will they skip to? Mars?

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JCT: Just imagine the impact if Arianna ever got behind
UNILETS time-creditos as the solution to poverty and theft!

So, now on to the standard schtick from politicians checking
out the drug scene:

WOULD SOFTER POT LAW STIR WRATH OF U.S.?
Globe and Mail (Canada) Sat, 13 Jul 2002
by Erin Anderssen
http://www.globeandmail.ca/

EA: The Neighbours Are Likely To Yell, But Not Everybody
Thinks That's The End Of The World

OTTAWA -- In the pot-perfumed haze of an Amsterdam coffee
house, MP Randy White, crime critic for the Canadian
Alliance, hauled out his business card and sat down to chat
with two toking patrons.
Chat, it should be pointed out, is all he did. Mr. White
says he's never touched the stuff, and there, in the city
famous for putting the finest varieties on government-
sanctioned menus, he claims he wasn't even tempted.

JCT: Why are they always talking to guys who don't know what
we're talking about. All this guy who knows nothing more
than the alcoholic experience of getting low and thinks the
natural cannabis experience of getting high is the same. I
have no respect for the opinion of anyone who fell for the
government line and ate their poison rather than break the
law and find the truth.

EA: This was business; last month, Mr. White and the other
members of the House of Commons committee studying Canada's
drug policy -- whose report is due this winter -- took to
the road, and naturally stopped off in Amsterdam. The first
evening, Mr. White went exploring.
JCT: The guy the Alliance Party has on the Committee is a
guy who knows nothing about drugs. Why would they pick a no-
nothing guy? Because only guys who haven't tried it can lie
with a straight face that it could be bad. In 50 years,
they'll be asking "Why did you pan the Mother Therese of
herbs?" and the only answer can be "I didn't know the
truth."
Or they've got no members who have tried medpot and know the
truth. Or they've got members who have but don't have the
nerve to stand up and tell the truth. Which is why I'm
offended whenever people tell me they think I'd be just like
all the rest.

EA: The two customers in the Amsterdam cafe -- a local and
his British friend who'd crossed the channel to "smoke
himself silly" -- were more than willing to explore their
pot habits, while hauling away on their joints. "We're going
to smoke it forever," they told Mr. White. "It's no worse
than someone on booze."

JCT: They should have said "it prevents disease, cures
others and helps people laugh about those it can't cure."
"It's no worse than booze" is true though not the most
powerful riposte.

EA: Mr. White later recalled: "We had a great discussion, a
few laughs. It was a nice place. It didn't even smell as
much as I thought."

JCT: There's one major difference. Mr. White had a great
discussion with people who "smoked themselves silly." Is
than in any way the kind of discussions he'd have with
people who drank themselves silly? You can't discuss with a
drunk but people stoned silly on the most potent weed have,
like Marc Paquette and Terry Parker, argued their own cases
before judges who at no point ever could have thought they
were impaired. Getting high with laughing grass is not like
getting low with booze.

EA: Two weeks earlier, on Washington's Capitol Hill and in
far less mellow conversation, the committee had heard a
different view. The man sitting across the table on that
June day was Republican Congressman Mark Souder, chairman of
the U.S. equivalent of the Commons committee on drug policy,
and the originator of a law that bans student loans for
Americans convicted of pot possession. He knew all about
Canada pondering the decriminalization of marijuana, and he
wasn't happy about it.

JCT: Here's a guy faced with an Internet full of anecdotal
evidence of the benefits of marijuana, zero evidence of
danger, whose going to have to do his lying with statistics.

EA: Sources told Canadian Press yesterday that Justice
Minister Martin Cauchon may be considering relaxing Canada's
marijuana laws to make possession punishable by a fine
instead of a prison sentence, without going as far as
legalizing the drug. Mr. Souder's message was clear,
committee members say: Proceed and we'll crack down even
more on your borders. B.C. bud, he pronounced, is as
dangerous as cocaine.

JCT: By now, most people are going to conclude that Mr.
Souder's likening laughing grass to cocaine means he isn't
playing with a full deck. I'd make minced meat out of him
any debate. But he's the Chairman of the U.S. equivalent of
the Commons committee on drug policy. Think about that. Just
like they send an MP completely ignorant of the facts, the
Chairman of the investigating committee is not only
completely ignorant of the facts but completely up on the
lies.

EA: "I thought, 'My God, what is this man talking about?'"
said Vancouver MP Libby Davies, a New Democrat. "We can't be
subservient to the ridiculous rhetoric coming out of the
United States."

JCT: Wrong objection, Libby. The problem is not whether
we're subservient to the States, it's whether marijuana is
as dangerous as cocaine. Libby's role in this is to deflect
argument away from what is truly objectionable onto what is
mildly, and uncorrectably, objectionable. To waste time as
usual. But the NDP have been in the House the whole time
Lawying Jean's been there and they have never championed
medpot as far as I know. They've now finally joined me on
the globalization picket line but, having never offered any
solutions in the 25 years I've studied them, led by former
leader Ed "Do something" Broadbent, they're looking to climb
fences with the other protest-obstructors, not offer an
alternative like us protest-instructors. So the NDP's
another party I'd expect to judas the cause if they ever got
in.
And for the record, I'd expect Marc-Boris St-Maurice, leader
of the Marijuana Party of Canada, to judas the cause if he
ever got in by his performance so far.

EA: In the debate over Canada's marijuana laws, however, the
United States looms large, the consequence of an open border
with the most rabid drug warrior in the world. Politicians
can discuss the bad science of marijuana laws, and the poor
cost-benefit ratio of busting people for simple pot
possession. But they always manage to come back to our
overbearing neighbours and how huffy they'd get if Canada
even followed Britain's decision this week to make warnings
the standard penalty for getting caught with a joint. It
works, some observers suggest, as a convenient excuse for
doing nothing. The question is: What would the ensuing
temper tantrum cost us?

JCT: It depends if you are dependent on the money system the
US is dependent on or if you have created your own
independent currency system. With a Canada LETS to trade
with the rest of the world's France LETS, Germany LETS,
Argentine LETS, etc, or everyone a member of UNILETS, who
cares what the loonie yanks say. Who needs their trade when
we'll capture the world's?

EA: Not all that much, suggests Ethan Nadelmann, executive
director at the Drug Policy Committee members like Mr. White
have been taking a close look at the issue, talking to
people who would be most affected by any change in
legislation. Alliance, a U.S. organization which favours
decriminalization of drugs. He argues that trade with Canada
is too important and a relatively minor move like
decriminalization will generate little bluster from the
White House.

JCT: This is not the Canadian Alliance party that favored
decriminalization then reneged. It's another. But it's good
to know it's all bluff too. We can win even if Canadian
medpotters don't wise up to jumping on LETS too.

EA: "Not that some people in the United States won't yell,"
he said. "But there's going to be a lot of people who don't
want to see the drug war screw about with multi-billion-
dollar business interests."

Other drug-policy observers are less certain. "This would be
another nail in the coffin," predicts Clayton Mosher, a
Canadian teaching at Washington State University, who sees
decriminalization tightening the border beyond the level
prompted by Sept. 11. "I don't see it as an idle threat.
There would be quite a reaction. There's already a
perception that B.C. is one big marijuana farm." The view of
Canada as a pot-smoking, pot-supplying nation is pervasive
in the U.S. news media. When Ottawa started handing out
permission slips for medical marijuana, the newspapers
reported it as a sign of a soft-drug stance. Great fuss is
generated over the high quality of the renowned B.C. bud.
Although the numbers aren't supported, the U.S. has
suggested that as much as half of the pot grown in Canada
goes south.

JCT: He doesn't see the US getting mad as an idle threat. So
what's he worried about? Trade sanctions? With Local
Employment-Trading Systems to help do our trading with?

EA: At the same time, though, experts insist, our national
drug policy continues to imitate the U.S. approach. Despite
claims of a de facto decriminalization, in 1999 -- the most
recent year for which statistics are available -- more than
21,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession in
Canada. That number amounts to nearly half of all the drug
charges laid in the country. A costly exercise, critics say,
which ends up discharging 25 per cent and saddling the rest
with criminal records.

JCT: Now add in the children taken away from their loving,
but smoking, parents, the lawyers, jobs, agonies, all thanks
to Jean Chretien and his crew of 150 Liberals denying
30,000,000 Canadians the best medicine God Ever Grew.

EA: Canada was ahead of the United States in making pot
illegal. Emily Murphy led the charge in 1923 with
declarations that referred to marijuana users as "raving
maniacs" liable to kill with "savage cruelty." In 1937, the
year Canada recorded its first arrest, the United States
passed its own law.

JCT: Emily, come up out of Hell for a few seconds and let
the Hosts of Heaven contemplate how your life on earth has
cursed Canadians with 80 years of misery. Now get back to
your hole in Hell and tell Harry Anslinger we know he did
ten times worse to the US.

EA: The war on drugs, nonetheless, is a U.S. fight, and
government officials have not been shy about applying
pressure to keep Canada and other nations on track, says
Ottawa lawyer Eugene Oscapella, one of the founders of the
Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy. In 1999, the United
States considered (and then retreated from) the idea of
adding Canada to its illicit-drug blacklist for being too
soft. In its drug literature, the U.S. State Department has
criticized the Supreme Court of Canada for restricting
undercover operations. Australian officials reported that in
l996 the United States had suggested to Australia that if
the country went ahead with plans to provide heroin as a
last resort to addicts, it might put at risk UN permission
for its opium poppy industry in Tasmania, where a healthy
business is carried on supplying pharmaceutical companies.
Australia eventually abandoned its heroin plans.

JCT: This is the kind of economic hard-ball people aren't
aware of. But it can't work when the victims can fall back
on a LETS to trade with if there's no money US money to
trade with.

EA: The current U.S. drug czar, John Walters, says
officially that Canada is a "sovereign" country, free to
make its own laws. On a visit last month to Quebec city, he
cited the U.S. government position that pot is addictive and
leads to harder drugs -- a position many researchers say
cannot be supported -- and made a forceful statement that
this is the time to target pot, not decriminalize it.

JCT: In other words, the US drug czar lies. And because no
one can tell him lies to his face, media report the lie and
the best they can do is point out researchers know it's a
lie. Remember, Bush's people get on national TV and lie.
They're not playing with a full deck and there's nothing so
worrisome as dealing with illogical people.

EA: "Ultimately, the big dilemma is not knowing what goes on
behind closed doors," Mr. Oscapella said. If Canada moves
toward decriminalization, Mr. Oscapella said, the main
problem for the U.S. government may be stemming the support
for a similar initiative from its own citizens.

JCT: No, the main problem will be stemming the initiative
from its own citizens with the support of ours.
But the point is that when the opposition get up in public
and lie, they've got something up their sleeves. That they
can just keep lying and not caring does seem to indicate
that they've got Chretien's 150 Judas liberals well under
their control.

But the pressure's on. Let's see if the 150 Judas Liberals
can hold us off or if it will take a change of government
for the new Judas Alliance to hold us off. But hold us off
they will as long as legalization means bankruptcy for large
corporations that are fighting hemp to stay alive.

With a LETS or UNILETS interest-free loan to retool and
reorganize, the need to thwart the national will to keep
hemp competition down will then be gone.

Funny how LETS and Cannabis, two of my Abolitionist Party's
three greatest policies, with the large-database base-rate
insurance being the third super policy the ail the financial
world - see http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/abprogs.htm -
keep coming together to complement each other.

Of course, cheapest insurance can't compete with the real
reforms to abolish of interest on loans which is genocide of
the poor and prohibition on cannabis is genocide of the sick
and healthy.

--
John C. "The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel, Author of the UNILETS
interest-free time-based currency United Nations C6 recommendation to
Governments in the http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel / http://www.medpot.net 613.632.2334